Toshiba has been a leader in the consumer electronics industry for as long as I can remember. Founded more than 70 years ago, this Japanese company manufacturers everything from tiny electronic components to consumer products like televisions, Blu-ray players and personal computers. Toshiba is no stranger to the storage industry either. The company designs and manufactures high-quality flash memory-based storage solutions, SSDs and hard disk drives for the consumer and enterprise markets.

To strengthen their position in the SSD market, Toshiba purchased the assets of OCZ Technology's SSD business in December of 2013. The business was soon re-launched as an independently-operated subsidiary named OCZ Storage Solutions. OCZ has continued to operate this way until recently, when Toshiba fully absorbed the business, turning the subsidiary into one of its sub-brands. To reduce the overlap between product lines, OCZ also pulled out of the enterprise market and will function as a consumer-only brand.

One of the first drives launched under Toshiba's new OCZ sub-brand is the VX500. Aimed at mainstream desktop and notebook users, this mid-range SSD is designed to deliver an excellent balance of performance, endurance, value and features. The VX500 is powered by Toshiba's own TC358790 controller and is available with up to 1TB of the company's 15nm MLC NAND flash. This combination not only provides excellent performance, it delivers over 3x the endurance of TLC-based SSDs, making it suitable for write-intensive applications.

The VX500 is available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities. For this review, OCZ sent us the 512GB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 550 MB/s sequential read and 515 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 92,000 random read and 64,000 random write IOPS.

Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB Solid State Drive

General Specifications

Part Numbers

VX500-25SAT3-512G

Capacity

512GB

Flash Type

Toshiba 15nm MLC

Controller

Toshiba TC358790

Cache

None

Form Factor

2.5-inch, 7mm height

Interface

SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance

Sequential Read

550 MB/s Max

Sequential Write

515 MB/s Max

Random Read (4K, QD32)

92,000 IOPS

Random Write (4K, QD32)

64,000 IOPS

Reliability

MTBF

1.5 million hours

Endurance (TBW)

296TB

Power Consumption

Active

Up to 3.4 W (typ.)

Idle

125 mW (typ.)

DevSleep

5 mW max

Environmental

Operating Temperature

0 ºC to 70 ºC

Storage Temperature

-40 ºC to 85 ºC

Shock Resistance

14.7 km/s {1500 G} (0.5 ms)

Vibration

196 m/s {20 Grms} (Peak, 10 to 2,000 Hz)

Dimensions and Weight

Dimensions

100 mm x 69.85 mm x 7.00 mm

Weight

52g (typ.)

Other Features

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) support TRIM support Acronis True Image HD cloning software Five year advanced warranty program

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the VX500 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Toshiba's new SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the VX500 have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from the OCZ brand? Keep reading as we find out.